The sound patterns of language

1. The sound patterns of language Phonology Chapter 5

2. This lecture • There are systematic differences between: • What speakers memorize about the sounds of words. • The speech sounds that speakers produce when they utter. • What speakers store in memory about the sounds of language, and how they translate these patterns into speech sounds.. Phonology

3. Phonetics & Phonology • Phonetics -- What are the sounds? How are they made in the vocal tract? • Phonology -- How do sounds combine? How do they affect each other?

4. What is the difference between phonetics and phonology? • Phonetics deals with the physical properties of the elements of the sound system, e.g. how the sound is physically produced. • Phonology deals with the sound systems languages • How speech are organized into systems in different languages • How sounds are combined • The relation between them and how they affect each other.

5. Definition of Phonology • The description of the systems and patterns speech sounds in a language. • Concerned with abstract or mental aspects of speech sounds. • Phonetics- [t] a voiceless alveolar stop • Phonology- ‘tuck’, ‘stuck’, ‘cut’ and ‘duck’.

6. Phonology • What knowledge do we possess about the phonological rules in our language? • Which sound sequences might be a word in our language thrim/blamp vs. gdit/rpukn • How to pronounce words we never heard before • Change foreign words to pattern like the words in our language • We know how to apply rules to words we never heard before

7. Phonemes and Allophones • Transcribe the following words • Top stop little kitten hunter • The [t] is different in each word. • [t] in ‘top’ is aspirated and non-aspirated in ‘stop’ • American English [t] a flap in ‘little’ • [t] in ‘kitten’ is a glottal stop • American English– there is no [t] in ‘hunter’

8. The phoneme • The smallest speech sound that distinguishes meaning. Its serves to create meaning differences, e.g. /t/ is different than /d/. • The phoneme is an abstract term, specific to a particular language. • It forms the structure of sound system in a language.

9. Phonemes • Consonant chart lists phonemes in English • The terms that are used in creating the chart are called ‘features’ which are marked by sign + & - • E.g [b] + voice + bilabial +stop [s] – voice + alveolar + fricative

10. Phonemes • /p/ [- voice, + bilabial, + stop] /k/ [- voice, + velar, + stop] • Natural class. • Sounds that have features in common behave phonologically in similar ways.

11. The allophone • Each phoneme may have different realisations depending on the context in which it is found. • the different articulations of /t/ • /s/ in seen and soon. • ‘seen’ is produced with spread lips, as /i/ follows. • ‘soon’ is realised with rounded lips, to prepare for the following rounded vowel, /u/. • This second, rounded /s/ is a variation, or allophone of the phoneme. • Allophones are what we actually produce and hear.

12. Allophones of /t/ • There are more [t]’s than you know • Example: the [t] in time is aspirated, but that in stop is not. aspiration= pause + air release prior to next sound • All these are allophones of the phoneme /t/. • These differences are usually expressed using phonological rules.

13. Phonemes and allophones

14. The difference between a phoneme and an allophone • If one allophone is exchanged with another, e.g. if seen is produced with lip rounding, the word, while perhaps sounding a bit strange, is still comprehensible. • If one phoneme is swapped with another, e.g. seen is produced with a /b/, instead of a /s/, the meaning of the word changes- they function contrastively

15. Finding Phonemes • minimal pairs of words • A minimal pair is a pair of words that have different meanings and which differ in only one sound. • Here is an example from English: Sip [sɪp] Zip [zɪp]

16. Minimal pairs • Four golden rules for minimal pairs: • They must have the same number of sounds • They must be identical in every sound except for one • The sound that is different must be in the same position in each word • The words must have different meanings Hit, hid & his minimal set

17. Phonotactics • Constraints on the sequence or position of phonemes • Permitted arrangements of sounds. • Phonological knowledge of the pattern of sounds in English will allow you to find some combination of sounds as acceptable and some as not. e.g lig, vig but not fslg or nglsb

18. Syllables and clusters • Syllable: a phonological unit that contains more than one phoneme • Syllables must contain a vowel or a vowel like consonants (w, j). • Open syllables (me, no) vs. closed syllables (Sam, dip). • Consonant cluster? • In English: CCV flat CCCV stress • Differs from one language to another.

19. Co-articulation • Our talk is often fast and spontaneous; articulators move from one sound to another without stopping. • Co-articulation: one sound becomes more like its neighboring sound. • Assimilation & elision

20. Assimilation • A rule that makes neighboring sounds similar by spreading a phonetic property from one sound to another • Ease of articulation • E.g. nasalized vowels occur before nasal sounds man vs. map / bob vs. bomb

21. Assimilation • Another example • I can go [ajkəŋgo] • The velar sound [g] will almost make the preceding nasal sound come out as [ŋ] (velar nasal) rather than the alveolar nasal [n]

22. Elision • Note the [d] in “you and me”or in“friendship” • The [d] is usually omitted in spoken English elision

23. Key terms • Phonology • Phonemes & allophones • Minimal pairs and sets • Phonotactics • Syllables • Co-articulation effects